Missing the Point?? #2

Plastics manufacturers, on one of their websites, at least partially own up to having a hand in the problems of “pollution and marine debris” in this recent article. (Side bar: “marine debris” is the plastics industry’s term for oceanic plastic pollution…their term just sounds better. Don’t be swayed by the double-talk – marine debris is made up of stuff like logs, dead whales and…the Flying Dutchman. Plastic pollution is called “plastic pollution”.)

Another part of the article mentions that plastics manufacturers need to “raise the profile of bag recycling efforts” – that, instead of actually taking a lead in collecting and dealing with their own instant trash, known commonly as “single use plastics”. The plastics industry is all about promoting the idea of us common citizens doing the actual work of cleaning up after their products. Kinda Us VS Them, in a nutshell. It’s not how responsible citizen-manufacturers should handle problem situations. But, then again, they ain’t responsible citizens of the local neighborhoods feeling the brunt of the resultant pollution, so why would they care, right?

It’s a sad state that the grinning “suit” in the byline misses the point that his group creates a nearly-instant item of trash – essentially handing it to us along with the burden of dealing with its apparently-too-tricky disposal (“too tricky” in that much of it ends up as pollution & litter, despite all of the industry’s sweat-soaked efforts to the opposite). It’s not often that someone hands me a piece of their trash to deal with, but the plastics industry exercises this action as an everyday function of “normal” business. When we try to better our surroundings by stopping the flow of this waste into our community…their idea of helping to address the problem is to sling a lawsuit at us and tell us that we are “anti-business”…niiiice. Luv ya buddy, come over for dinner sometime, NOT!

Again, the plastics industry is not a “neighbor” in the figurative (much less the literal) sense of the word - they demonstrate to us that they are a simple entity bent on simple survival, simple self-preservation, simple easy MONEY, and simply trampling any efforts that seek to better the environment and…our neighborhoods, efforts which may harm their too-simple business model. Small minds seeking the least creative, collaborative, and constructive solutions. A lawsuit? C’mon, that’s grade school, playground-diplomacy thinking – d’you mean to tell us that you can’t think of a way to 1) fix the problem that you created, 2) make money doing it, 3) become champions of communities AND 4) set an example for other industry? A 1) win, 2) win, 3) win, 4) win opportunity - Try it, you’ll like it.